National Coalition for Language Access
What is the NCFLA?
The National Coalition for Language Access (NCFLA) is a coalition of organizations and individuals that care deeply about the rights of people who speak limited English, who are Deaf, Deafblind or hard-of-hearing to communicate clearly with professionals in healthcare, education, social service or legal settings.
We are administrators, doctors, lawyers, interpreters, advocates, and educators. We work in healthcare, in education, in courts, in refugee resettlement and in immigrant rights associations.
We are hearing and Deaf and deafblind, we are monolingual and multilingual, born in the U.S and immigrants and refugees. Some of us have started to support language access recently, while many of us have been doing this work for decades.
All of us are alarmed to see the communicative rights of people in the U.S. being eroded, making it harder for people in our multilingual country to access services in a language other than English, and making it harder for health/educational/human service professionals to do their jobs.
The coalition came together remotely through word-of-mouth on March 2, 2025, following the release of Executive Order 14224 in which President Donald Trump designated English as the national language of the United States. Our goals are to educate and advocate.
The Coalition for Sign Language Equity in Technology (CoSET) is committed to protecting the integrity of communication between principal communicators in any interpreted interaction by.
The attorneys general of 19 states and the New York City Corporation Counsel urge the FCC to immediately publish its January 8, 2025 Multilingual Wireless.
Title: An Emerging Threat to Health Equity: Diminished Patient Access to Language Services Authors: Sabrina Derrington, Amelia Barwise, Lynette Martins, and Rachel Fabi Publication Date:.
Six leading professional associations representing over 27,800 U.S. translators and interpreters strongly oppose President Trump’s Executive Order 14224 (March 1, 2025), which designates English as.
Health Care and U.S. Immigration Enforcement: What Providers Need to Know Publication Date: March 2025 This guide, produced by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) and.
There are different kinds of government actions. Not all carry the same weight, and they each play very different roles in how our government works.
STATUTES are laws.
Statutes are laws, passed by both Houses of Congress and signed by the President. Laws can only be changed by a new law being passed by both Houses of Congress and signed by the President.
REGULATIONS implement statutes.
Regulations are the specific instructions that an agency develops in order to implement a law. Regulations can be changed by an agency (e.g. the Department of Health and Human Services or the Department of Justice) through a process of drafting, requesting public input, and responding to the input.
GUIDANCE explains regulations.
Guidance is provided by an agency to clarify regulations. Guidance can be issued at any time, but it cannot change a regulation or a law.
EXECUTIVE ORDERS bind only the Executive Branch.
Executive Orders are instructions sent by the President to the agencies of the Executive Branch of the government. Executive Orders can be changed by a President at any time, but they cannot change a statute, a regulation or a guidance.
The following current statutes, regulations, guidance and Executive Orders support/impact language access.
Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination based on race, color, or national origin in any program or activity receiving federal.
Executive Order 14224, signed on March 1, 2025, designates English as the official language of the United States, revokes Executive Order 13166 (which required federal.
The NCFLA has started a project to collect stories about how language access, or a lack thereof, has impacted individuals, organizations, and communities. These stories come from people who communicate in a language other than English, who are Deaf, Deafblind or Hard of Hearing, or who work in healthcare, education, social services, or the legal professions.
Starting in March 2025, information regarding language access was removed from many federal websites. We have preserved these pages as they contain many useful ideas, strategies, and resources for providing language access. The archived materials will soon be available here.
